I was pleased to see that my dad took the plunge and got my mom a Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch for Christmas. It’s a cool eReader: A crisp display and very responsive to your finger gestures.

The big disappointment, however, came when we realized that an outlet charger was an extra accessory that had to be purchased separately. The only way to charge the Nook is by plugging it into a computer.

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No matter how careful you are, it always seems inevitable that you will one day drop your tablet computer. Whether it’s an iPad, Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet, gravity doesn’t play favorites.

So which tablet can take a tumble and come out unscathed? Here’s a quick video demonstrating a Nook Tablet and a Kindle Fire falling from different heights on to different ground surfaces. Enjoy!

Barnes & Noble unveiled their newest Nook iteration: The Nook Tablet. This is the book chain’s answer to Amazon’s Kindle Fire. I speculated in an earlier post how B&N will respond to Amazon’s tablet computer. I only said if they don’t already have something in the pipeline, it could be a bad holiday season for the world’s largest bookseller.

Luckily for them, that’s not the case.

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty. Here are some of the features the new tablet/eReader sports:

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Barnes & Noble issued a press release with their Q1 earnings. As expected, print sales continued to take a dive. It looks more and more like B&N is being propped up by their Nook eReader and digital book sales.

I’m not sure if digital sales alone will be enough to keep the bookseller alive, but it goes without saying that it doesn’t hurt.

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Barnes & Noble issued a press release today announcing a Nook Color firmware upgrade to 1.3 and the bookseller is adding interactive editions of popular magazines. These periodicals will be optimized for the Nook Color’s display and offer bonus features.

They also issued a few other announcements:

New York, New York – August 23, 2011 – Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, announced today it is enhancing its best-in-class NOOK Newsstand, giving NOOK Color customers even more interactive versions of the country’s favorite magazines and newspapers. With the addition of top titles including FORTUNE, PEOPLE, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, TIME, Parents and Fitness magazines, Barnes & Noble now offers more top 100 magazines than any other digital newsstand service. These newly added titles include a selection of interactive special editions optimized for NOOK Color’s stunning 7-inch color touchscreen with all the print magazine content along with an exciting array of bonus features. Print subscribers to FORTUNE, PEOPLE, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and TIME can enjoy the NOOK Magazine(TM) versions on their NOOK Color at no additional cost. These new magazines and periodicals – totaling more than 200 – along with other enhancements can be enjoyed by NOOK Color customers through a free software update available at www.nookcolor.com/update or provided over the air (OTA) to customers connected to Wi-Fi beginning this week.

An Even Richer Reading Experience

With the version 1.3 software update, millions of NOOK Color customers will get more from their favorite magazines than ever before. Starting with special edition versions of FORTUNE, PEOPLE, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and TIME, Time Inc. will make all 21 of its U.S. titles including Real Simple, InStyle, Entertainment Weekly and Cooking Light available on NOOK Color by the end of the year. Additional special edition versions are expected this fall from Better Homes and Gardens and others. These NOOK Magazine special editions offer customers all of the great content in the current print edition, along with a host of extras, built right into the pages to get more of the story – from videos and audio podcasts, animations, photo galleries and other bonus features. With these embedded multimedia enhancements, magazine lovers will be able to watch celebrity interviews, see the week’s sports highlights, listen to podcasts, take quizzes, get how-to’s on arts and crafts, and even learn new exercises with fitness videos to stay in shape. These special editions also feature a portrait-centric reading experience that’s fun and simple to use, as well as the ability to get to desired content quicker. Just tap the article promoted right on the magazine cover or in the table of contents.

“We’re proud to work with leading periodical publishers to deliver an unmatched selection of bestselling digital magazines to NOOK Color customers,” said Jonathan Shar, Vice President and General Manager of digital newsstand at Barnes & Noble. “With more than 200 of the top periodicals available in NOOK Newsstand for NOOK Color, Barnes & Noble continues to provide customers with the best digital periodical collection.”

More Periodicals, Across More Devices

In addition to the six new special edition magazines available on NOOK Color, NOOK Newsstand now offers an even wider variety of popular titles including new additions such as Ladies’ Home Journal, Traditional Home, Siempre Mujer, Smithsonian Magazine, The Knot and more. Engaging digital magazines are offered in rich color, featuring Barnes & Noble’s innovative ArticleView(TM) which allows customers to customize the article text to their favorite reading style.

NOOK Color and NOOK(TM) device customers will also find an even greater selection of major market daily newspapers with many recently added titles. All periodicals are available for subscription with a 14-day free trial or via single copies. NOOK device customers can also enjoy Time and Fortune in digital versions, designed for NOOK’s crisp E Ink(TM) display. And most NOOK Newsstand titles are also accessible to iPad(TM) and Android(TM) tablet owners using the free NOOK for iPad(TM) and NOOK for Android(TM) reading applications (www.bn.com/freenookapps).

NOOK Color v1.3 Now Available

Through its latest free NOOK Color firmware update, Barnes & Noble has made ongoing enhancements for Wi-Fi connectivity, other performance improvements and is adding a new feature to give parents and organizations the much-requested ability to disable the built-in Web browser. The NOOK Color v1.3 software update is available at no cost via immediate manual download at www.nookcolor.com/update. A free over-the-air (OTA) update will begin rolling out to customers connected to Wi-Fi beginning this week.

Experience the NOOK Newsstand special interactive editions and other great new content at the NOOK Boutique(TM) or display in one of Barnes & Noble’s more than 700 bookstores across the country, hundreds of Barnes & Noble College bookstores or by visiting www.nookcolor.com. NOOK Color, along with NOOK devices, can also be found at Best Buy, Walmart, Staples, Books-A-Million, OfficeMax, and Fred Meyer stores.

 

After weeks of anger, frustration, crying and throwing chairs around the house, Brad’s Reader is back up again. We’re not running on all cylinders quite yet. The homepage still needs to be reinstalled, as do the ads. But at least I’m able to post again. These past few weeks have been the worst in my blogging life.

That said, I’m happy to have Brad’s Reader up and running again. If you notice any of the viagra links appearing in your RSS feed or in Google search results, let me know ASAP. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that doesn’t happen.

Please, take my advice and go over your website’s security measures. Make sure it’s locked down tight. This pharma hack is complete hell to deal with, so it’s better to make the effort now to prevent your own site from being attacked.

In the meantime I look forward to getting back to posting. Thank you for all your support!

- Brad

I became curious about who was searching for what on Google. More specifically, I wanted to know how searches for the Amazon Kindle compared with Google searches for the Barnes & Noble Nook.

Using Google Trends, I entered the terms “Kindle” and “Nook” and then specified the time period for the last 12 months. That means this post will be outdated almost immediately. If you’re reading this two years after it was written, take it with a grain of salt.

The first thing I noticed was that searches for the Amazon Kindle were much higher than for the Nook. This tells me that the Kindle still dominates the market. And while the Nook has made great inroads in the ebook world, B&N still has a long way to go.

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